The IPKat

Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

Never too late: if you missed the IPKat last week ...

This week we celebrate the 43rd weekly listing of the previous week's Katposts, once again cunningly contrived and collated by our friend and ally Alberto Bellan. For the benefit of newcomers to this weblog, of which there have been many in recent weeks, we should explain that the function of these weekly posts is to give readers a chance to tell at a glance what items they may have missed and, if any of those items takes their fancy, a chance to click through to them via hyperlinks from their titles.

"I would like one of those new unitary patents. I hear they will be only a fraction of the cost of the old ones". So starts a hypothetical but not-so-unreal conversation between a client and his patent attorney, subtly crafted by Darren in dialogue form.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has issued a provisional full version of its 2014 Report, which covers the work of the Court of Justice, the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal, and provides yummy information for IP aficionados. Eleonora looks it over.

Birgit reports on a recent German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof)decision on the legality of a trade mark parody that 'in its overall impression' was based on an earlier well-known trade mark.

Some weeks ago, the IPKat posted “The EU patent package: a dangerous precedent? A call for sanity”, here, a motion supported by more than 50 academics and practitioners. Wouter Pors (Bird & Bird, The Hague), not entirely agreeing with the motion, posted his reply here. The drafters of the motion have now prepared a detailed reply to Wouter's comments, which is handily summarised in this post.

Wondering what might be the fate of the European Commission's proposals for trade mark reform? The EU Council and the European Parliament are, at least in theory, supportive, according to the media release that Jeremy mentions in this post.

Andy Johnstone (who also contributes to the CopyrightAid.co.uk forums) responds to the Katpost "The CJEU 'new public' criterion? National judges should not apply it, says Prof Jan Rosen" (here), which Eleonora published last week.

Last September this blog reported [here and here] on the decision of the CJEU inTU Darmstadt v Ulmer, C-117/13, a reference from the Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice) seeking clarification as to the interpretation of relevant exceptions in the InfoSoc Directivethat allow, among others, publicly accessible libraries to digitise works in their collections and makethem available for users to view at dedicated terminals. Following the CJEU's judgment, the Bundesgerichtshof has now issued its decision in this case,reports Eleonora.